HuffPo to Launch Books Section

On October 5, the Huffington Post will unveil a new books section and kick off an Oprah-style book club, the New York Observer reported yesterday. According to Arianna Huffington, the site will feature essays and articles culled from the New York Review of Books alongside material contributed by HuffPo readers, a mixture designed to highlight “the best of the old and the best of the new.”

The upcoming books department will be overseen by Amy Hertz, currently an editor-at-large with Penguin’s Dutton imprint. Hertz, who met Huffington while the latter was shopping her 2006 book On Becoming Fearless… In Love, Work, and Life (Little, Brown), will stay on with Dutton despite her new appointment. Huffington has not yet disclosed any details about her book club selections.

Robert Silvers, founder and editor of the New York Review of Books, told the Observer that his staff will work with that of the Huffington Post to choose material for inclusion in the new section. He said that the details of the partnership were still being hammered out, but readers could expect an “official announcement” from the fortnightly magazine soon.

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In an editorial published in last Sunday's edition of the Times-Picayune,
a daily newspaper in New Orleans, the editors wrote, "In the past year,
newspapers across the country have made dramatic cutbacks in their
coverage of books," and went on to announce that on January 11 the
newspaper will debut "The Reading Life," an expanded package of book
reviews and coverage of the New Orleans literary scene in the Living
section each Friday.

The Washington Post announced yesterday that it will shutter the
print version of Book World, the stand-alone book review section of its
Sunday edition, and move reviews to two other sections of the paper.

Every Tuesday the
literary trade paperback imprint will choose a new book (published by
Picador, of course) and invite readers to discuss it via the social
networking and microblogging service—in 140-character text messages
called "tweets"—two weeks later.

The New Yorker on Tuesday announced the creation of a book club,
or, as the editors prefer to think of it, a "readers’ cooperative—a
standing invitation to roll up your sleeves and dig deep into a book,
and see what together we uncover."